Former Bafana Bafana striker Benni McCarthy believes the difference between his generation, and the current one is passion and having priorities in check.
McCarthy has enjoyed an illustrious career spanning almost two decades playing in countries like Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and England. He also still holds the all-time top goal scorer record for his national team and recently published his autobiography with his name as the title.
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The Harambee Stars mentor spoke to iDiski Times senior journalist Matshelane Mamabolo in edition 246 of the newspaper on a range of issues.
One those issues being the distractions faced by the current generation of players who he believes have more talent, in things like social media and not taking care of the one thing that makes them popular.
“Our generation loved football more than being on the front page,” McCarthy told iDiski Times.
“We wanted to succeed, to play for the best teams in South Africa and eventually go to Europe. There’s just too much showboating. Players are more interested in social media platforms about how good they look in the kit rather than what it takes to help you win things.
“Everything you have comes because of football. So you have to respect that and dedicate yourself to your craft.
“Players today are probably more talented than we were. But they don’t dedicate themselves to their craft the same way.
“Today, you often see players focusing on their phones. I don’t want to be highly critical of players, but I think they need to seriously start to put football first more because the limelight, everything that you have, everything that’s coming to you is because of football.
“So, you need to respect that a little bit more and dedicate yourself to your craft. Train better, work harder, less time on Instagram and TikTok or create emojis, videos and all that.
“But dedicate a littlebit more to training, improving and becoming better.”
